Playing For Keeps
by Gogol
Summary: In the end, the fate of the Centaurian slug is decided by an inadvisable game of poker.


When he comes to, in a mess of doubled images and clean sheets and tubing, he shifts his weight, slides halfway off the edge of the biobed, which was not his intention, and gets an upside-down view of the nurse, Chapel he thinks her name is, who's barring the doorway, hands on her hips. Behind her, Pike can just make out various extremities of a cadet he doesn't know, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform. They are arguing too quietly for him to hear, dizzy and unfocused as he is, but he catches a few phrases, when she goes high and shrill with indignation: "...haggling over a slug..." "...hardly appropriate..." "...the _last _thing he needs..."

"Something wrong?" he calls, mildly, pulling himself back up. At least, he means it to be mild. His voice cracks halfway through 'wrong', which kills the effect a little. Chapel is mollified regardless, though, so that's all right.

"Nothing, sir. Try to sleep."

"Easy for you to say," he mutters, settling back into his pillows at the same time as the stranger stage-whispers, "Who's he, again?"

"That's Captain Pike. Who is not in any shape to –"

But the other man has taken advantage of her slightly relaxed stance to barrel through and over to Pike's bedside. Pike gazes blearily up at him and takes a moment to figure out why he's extended a hand before taking it, with no little caution in case the man, say, explodes with enthusiasm. Chapel clicks over after him on high heels and hesitates a little by the monitor.

"Er. Hello," Pike says.

"You're the one who swallowed a poisonous truth-serum-releasing slug? And you aren't gibbering? _Brilliant!" _the man cries, pumping his hand up and down violently. Pike blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, extricates his arm, re-opens his mouth, and says, "Who the hell are you?"

"The name's Montgomery Scott. Scotty. I'm the head engineer, for now, 'cos your last one's busy regrowing a rib. And I was wondering if I could b– " he begins, at which point Chapel apparently decides that enough is enough and covers Mr. Scott's mouth.

It's then that a doctor Pike recognizes as the one who sneaked Kirk onboard walks in from the supply room, arms full of a clipboard and many small bottles, with what Pike's rapidly coming to see is a preternaturally dramatic sense of timing. "What's going on?" McCoy demands, crossing over to where Mr. Scott is miming something like a deformed rabbit in an apparent attempt to get his point across nonverbally. He stares at him for a moment before glancing down at Pike.

"Good, you're awake. And... stable, yes, temperature rising, right..." The list trails off as he scans the incomprehensible screen hanging by Pike's head. "Fine, great, that's just dandy. How are you feeling, sir?"

"I've been better," Pike says. "Numb, dizzy, migraine. I don't suppose you can tell me why our head engineer is a lunatic –" he ducks an overenthusiastic 'two-syllables' gesture "– with a thing for charades?"

"You'd have to ask Kirk why," McCoy says, "and as acting CMO I recommend that you don't talk to Kirk until I'm sure about your blood pressure. But he did get us out of that black hole with his damnfool plan."

"Ah," Pike says, intelligently.

"Chapel, you can probably take your hand _off _now," McCoy adds, running the tricorder along the line of Pike's neck.

"Don't say anything until Dr. McCoy finishes his examination," she says, and lets go. Mr. Scott of the damnfool plans gasps exaggeratedly for breath but wisely holds his peace. Dr. McCoy duly finishes his examination, which takes the form of flashcards, bright lights, and fragments of Vulcan skipping rhymes to translate.

"Well, you're recovering as well as can be expected, Captain," he says, eventually. "The dialysis hasn't drained all the secretions out of your system yet, though, so your inhibitors are probably still affected; would also explain the numbness. I suggest you try to move your legs, in particular, as little as possible, since it was at the base of your spinal column and the detach could be dangerous if we aren't careful. Fortunately there's nothing wrong with your head, at least that a few painkillers can't fix."

"You don't say," Pike retorts, rubbing his temple, where a knot of pain is developing.

"So can I talk to him?" Mr. Scott inquires, leaning forward.

"You can talk to him," McCoy says. "But try not to ask any embarrassing personal questions, unless you want a lasting grudge; he might have to answer, in his current state."

"Great," Pike says. He's ignored.

"Donnae worry about that, Captain," Mr. Scott says, "I'm only interested in a business proposition." Over his shoulder, the nurse sighs, pinches the bridge of her pretty nose, and sits down in a plastic chair with the air of a woman who has tied her patience to a tree to keep it from getting away from her.

Pike raises an eyebrow. "Sorry? A business proposition?"

"That's right!" Mr. Scott says. "I'd like to buy your slug."

"You," Pike says slowly, "would like to buy my slug."

"Oh, yeah."

"First off, it's not _my_ slug. Second, what the hell do you want a Centaurian slug for?"

"Be great at parties."

"What, for truth or dare? It's _dead, _Mr. Scott," McCoy interjects.

"Exactly! I could hook it up to a lava lamp!"

There's a brief, enormous silence that expands to fill the sickbay, swollen with the weight of three incredulous gazes concentrated on one point, i.e., Mr. Scott, so heavy and final that it blankets the countless small noises, the humming machinery, the murmuring patients, almost all of them drugged to the gills and unconscious, and those few staff awake and attending to their business discreetly and definitely _not _shooting the cluster around Pike's bed curious looks between shots.

Mr. Scott deflates only slightly. "What?"

"It's the sole specimen of a species we've never seen the likes of," McCoy says, flatly. "As soon as we land, it's going to the scientists."

"You have a replicator," Mr. Scott points out. "You can make as many copies as you like. Probably already have." (The way McCoy's mouth twitches suggested that this, at least, is a logical enough presumption.) "All I'm asking is if'n I can buy the original, like."

"I've no reason to sell it," Pike says, amused despite himself. "And as I mentioned, it's not even mine."

"Well, I don't think Nero wants it."

"True. But Dr. McCoy has as much right to it as anyone, he did cut it out."

Mr. Scott blinks, pulls away from the side of the bed, and runs a hand through his hair (which is stiff, matted, like hair that had dried without being combed). "Hadn't thought of it like that," he murmurs, eyeing McCoy with a less than hopeful look. Understandable; McCoy glowers back, an expression that is fairly terrifying even under the six o' clock shadow and bruised lower lids, or, in other words, is about as encouraging to friendly business propositions as a rabid sehlat.

"Tell you what," Scott says, after a good long pause. "Any of you play poker?"

"Nope," Chapel says, brightly.

"I do," Pike says, taken off-guard.

"Why do you want to know?" McCoy growls.

"Could play you for the slug," Mr. Scott says, drawing up a second chair and plopping into it like someone who does not intend to budge for a good while. "Whoever ends with the most chips wins it by default. Eh? What do you say?"

"Hmm," McCoy says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "let me think about that one. How about: _no._"

"Your nurse was just telling me about how you'd finally gotten all your patients stabilized," Mr. Scott protests. "What else do you have to do while the _Enterprise _crawls back to Earth?"

"Write up my reports, maybe, like every other head of department should be doing right now? Aren't you supposed to be fixing the ship, anyway, you madman?"

"Done everything I could with what we have left," Mr. Scott says, dismissively. "Now it's just a matter of waiting. And a little game of cards, perhaps?"

Pike and Chapel exchange looks. This is better than a ball game but not quite as good as Klingon cagefighting matches, Pike decides, in the blessed privacy of his own mind. (He might still have the pressing urge to answer all questions, but at least he no longer has to say every passing thought aloud. Small mercies, and so forth.)

Something occurs to him, though. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Almost twelve hours," McCoy says.

"And how long till we land?"

"An estimated further eighteen hours."

"And how long until you let me out of your supervision?"

"Longer than that."

"And when are you planning on letting me interrogate Kirk, not to mention telling me what's happened since I went to the _Narada_?"

"Not for at least six hours. I don't want you stressed this early into your mental adjustment."

"I think," Pike says, "I think a game of poker would be a very good idea."

Chapel rolls her eyes and looks expectantly to McCoy; but McCoy actually seems to see his point. "I can't believe I'm even considering this," he groans.

"Is that a yes?" Mr. Scott says.

McCoy scrubs his eyes with the heel of his palm. "Sure," he says at last. "Sure! Why not." He laughs a ragged laugh that is worryingly manic. "We can play poker for Nero's pet slug."

"You'll want to find another player," Chapel says, "since I am certainly not in."

"What kind of team spirit is that?" McCoy says.

"The sensible kind," she says curtly, standing. "I believe my shift is over, Dr. McCoy."

"Chapel –"

She strides out, almost collides with Spock, who has insinuated himself in the hallway just outside, and vanishes around a corner. McCoy glares after her. Pike has a sudden, creeping suspicion, which he makes a note of and adds to an extensive list of notes about how dynamics have changed on his poor ship in less than two days.

"Och," Mr. Scott says under his breath. Pike is inclined to agree. He nods to Spock, however, and says, "Will you join us, Commander?"

Spock is perfectly blank as he enters, hands clasped behind his back, expression one of faint disapproval that is echoed by the tension in his spine, although that unquestionably has a terrible source which does not involve the thankfully distracting antics of Mr. Scott. And he says: "Thank you, Captain, I believe I will. I have been as yet unable to rest."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," McCoy says, collapsing into Chapel's abandoned seat.. "_You _want to play poker?"

"Who else is there?" Mr. Scott says. "You want to corrupt some poor ensign, is that it?"

"Lieutenants Sulu and Chekov have retired," Spock says, helpfully. "Uhura also."

"And you already said no Kirk for his blood pressure's sake," Mr. Scott continues, jerking a thumb at Pike. "The Russian kid? You don't want that, he's some kind of maths prodigy, he'll clean us both out and you won't be able to give the slug to the Academy at all."

"He has a point," Pike says, lifting a hand to cover his smile.

"Oh god," McCoy says, slouching further forward. "Fine. Fine! I don't know why Commander Spock would even want the slug, but fine!"

(The grudging "I'll deal" comes out somewhat muffled after he puts his head in his hands).

*

Deep into delta shift, when he has returned to his quarters, leaving three slightly stunned fellow officers behind, Spock rests the jar at the exact center of his desk and admires the sinusoid line of the slug's silhouette, partially visible through the green-golden liquid it is suspended in, the shape of where it curled around Pike's spine retained even now in rigor mortis. It is rather aesthetically pleasing, in a dark, blobby way, and it will make an excellent... what is the human term?

Souvenir.

He has every sympathy for his opponents, naturally. None of them took into account, as they sorted out their cards, that there is, after all, such a thing as a species bred for the perfect poker face. And in their defense, it has been a very long day.

But he cannot resist allowing himself a hint of satisfaction, a welcome instant of illogical pleasure, as he brushes his fingerprints against glass and turns it this way and that way to see the diffuse lamplight, refracted and reflected gloriously in formaldehyde.

"Fascinating," he murmurs, and goes to join the sleeping woman whose long lithe body is taking up most of his bed.


End file.
